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Sogliola alla Fiorentina

For those who don’t speak Italian, Sole with spinach and a light ‘creamy’ sauce. This is a very easy recipe. I don’t prepare too much fish at home, not that I don’t like to eat it, but more because of the smell it leaves in my house 🙂 (I sound like my Italian aunt). Normally this dish is made with sole, but you can easily replace this fish by plaice or any other flatfish. I also didn’t use sole this time as it was a bit expensive when I wanted to buy it. I’ll be preparing/ serving it the easy way, but you can be as creative as you want when serving it. You could role the fish up with the spinach in between or just make the fish with the sauce and serve it with mashed potatoes with spinach, etc….

For 2 people you would need the following amount of ingredients (in case for more people, just multiply 🙂 ) When you buy the fish you can either by filets or an entire fish. In both case the fish as to be skinned. If you would use a whole sole for example you first bake it an afterwards remove the bones.

Ingredients:
• 2 Soles (or 8 filets, if you are a small eater you can always take less)
• 200g fresh spinach (young leaves)
• 30g Parmesan cheese (for making a nice crust under the grill)
• Flour (not much, just to put on the fish just before baking it)
• Salt, pepper & nutmeg
• 2 lumps of butter (for the spinach and to bake the fish)
• 250 ml cooking cream
• 1 glass of fish stock (this would be between 350and 400 ml)
• Glass of white wine

Get started:
• First of all we’ll start with talking the stalk of the spinach leaves.
• Melt some butter in a small pot (make sure you can fit all your spinach in the pot) and throw in the spinach. Just let it absorb the butter for max 10 minutes (stir from time to time). Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

• The following step would be the fish. Season them with salt and pepper. If you use fish filets you first flour them. Heat a pan with a lump of butter (or olive oil if you prefer it) and bake the filets max 2min on each side (they just need a little bit of color) In case you use a whole fish you do the same, but remove the bone from the fish.
• Put the fish aside and use the same pan (not cleaned) to make the sauce. You put the pan on the heat; deglaze the pan with the white wine. Add the fish stock and cream. Let it cook for 5 minutes
• Take 2 baked filets. Put some spinach on one filet and lay another filet on top. Make “double” filets until all filets are used.
• Take a baking tray (butter it to make sure the fish won’t stick) and arrange the “double” filets in it. Pour the sauce over the fish. Put a bit of grated Parmesan cheese on top of the “double” filets and let it cook for 8 minutes in a preheated oven of 180°C (356°F) and 2 minutes under a grill to make a nice crust.
Enjoy 🙂 you could serve it with mashed potatoes. I added some mustard in my mash with gave it that little extra flavor.